Countdown To A Kiss (A New Year's Eve Anthology) Read online

  Chapter Eleven

  One o’clock in the morning.

  “You’re kidding me, right, Mom? I just navigated home in the worst ice storm Henderson’s ever had and you want me to go back there?” Wilder was incredulous. “For a damned mink stole? What happened to worrying about me all the time? Wouldn’t it worry you to send me back out in this mess?”

  “You were in the Air Force in Iraq for three years,” she replied mildly. “And as you’ve reminded me countless times, you can pilot fighter jets and navigate space shuttles. I think you can manage to drive four miles in an ice storm in an SUV.”

  Wilder just gaped at her. She was dressed in a fluffy pink bathrobe, holding a glass of wine. And Rick was standing behind her, in sweats and a sweatshirt. He looked very comfortable—as opposed to Wilder, who was still in his tux, sans his very sexy date, and once again alone on New Year’s Eve. And he’d just driven home on a sheet of ice.

  “It’s a mink stole, Mom. How could you forget a mink stole? It’ll still be there tomorrow. I’ll go back first thing in the morning.”

  But she gave him a mutinous look. “Someone might take it. Do you know how much those things cost? And Rick gave it to me for Christmas…I’ve only had it for a week! I forgot it because they were rushing us out the door because the roads were getting bad.”

  He still couldn’t believe her insistence. Why the hell didn’t she send Rick to get it? Then he looked at the older man and realized exactly why she wanted him out of the house. And all of a sudden, he was fine with not being in the same building while his mom and her boyfriend were…doing whatever. Spanks. He shuddered. “Fine. I’ll go. But if I end up in the ditch, you’re coming to dig me out,” he told her. “And don’t expect me back soon. It’ll take at least fifteen minutes to get there. If I don’t go off the damned road.”

  He slammed out the door, leaving Rick and his mother watching in his wake.

  “What if there’s no one there to let him in?” Rick asked, rubbing a hand down her spine. He had that look in his eyes, and Sandra Wilder knew what that meant.

  “Oh, there’s someone there,” she replied, smiling up at him.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Apparently there’s something you’re not telling me. Well, at any rate, we might want to get busy…before he returns.”

  She shook her head and linked her arm through his. “We have all the time in the world. He won’t be back tonight.”